It’s heartwarming to see more and more Tamil school students doing well in both their academic and co-curricular activities. The recent success of SJKT Kajang in winning the Fan Favorite Award in the Interact Video Awards ( IVA 2015 ) competing against 87 entries from 25 countries is not just commendable but is worth including in Malaysian Book of Records.

Why are such international winnings by students not recorded in the Malaysian Book of Records, they deserve the recognition.

On the other hand, while debating on ways to reward and inspire more Tamil school students, let us not forget the school with termite problem that made it to the headlines of our local Tamil dailies and online news portals - SJKT Slim River.

While one school successfully established an Interact Club and collaborated with Universiti Putra Malaysia to participate in a competition organized by International Rotary Club, this school’s termite problem was not attended to for the past five years (since a complaint was lodged by the school’s parent-teacher association). Jabatan Kerja Raya, too, has declared four years ago that this school building is unsafe for the students. To date, no concrete action has been taken.

What caused this gap? Both are government schools and both are under the Education Ministry, RM100 million was allocated three years ago by our PM for Tamil schools, how did we miss to channel the fund for this on-going issue in Slim River? In today’s paper, YB P Kamalanathan has mentioned that education is crucial for every individual, why is the opportunity to be a learned person not equal among the Tamil schools in Malaysia?

For how long will we continue to debate and discuss about primary schools issues while other races are quick to march towards increasing number of secondary schools and even tertiary institutes? We are still not settled with primary schools lacking halls, fields, etc.

Are we saying that in these 59 years, there isn’t even one policymaker/politician/academician who has thought about this? Is our society lacking of visionaries or is the political bureaucracy hindering progress?

Whichever the answer is, it has to be solved. And it has to be solved within a given time frame. We cannot afford to discuss about the same issue in 2020. You are gambling with our future. Every student has in him/her the potential to soar higher with the right guidance and conducive environment - what is the actual hindrance here? Time to iron out issues and bring out the hidden achiever in our every student.

S GOPINATH is president of the Malaysian Indian Network of Entrepreneurs Association (1MINE).